Apologies, again. This is another of those ‘Boiled Snow’ posts, for my benefit rather than readers, intended to clear the mush that got stuck there trying to deal with this surprise issue over the past few days, as it was completely unexpected (there was no warning of anything being amiss), compounded by a locknut that apparently has no way of being tightened!
After making this post Failure may be an option, but does it ALWAYS have to be? I was really irritated by the lack of actual pic of the offending cone nut, seal, etc, so decided I had to resurrect an old camera that was good for macro options.
Since losing my usual macro camera, I’ve meant to raise this one, which always took decent pics, even though it lacks high ISO sensitivity, and any sort of anti-shake or vibration toys.
That said, I got lucky when I got it working, as that strange phenomenon of… SUNLIGHT made an appearance in Scotland!
So, I got decent pics of the odd dust cap and oil seal on the offending bearing mentioned in that post.
Bearing pics
I ended up with a load of pics to evaluate the camera, so ended up with three options after reviewing the results.
Bear in mind a normal/ordinary cone nut with attached dust cap looks like this, with the cap fixed about halfway along the body of the cone nut. The cap/shield can be omitted, leaving only the plain cone nut.
This first pic below shows the profile of my odd dust cap/shield, together with its locknut on the right, and flexible seal (to keep dirt out and grease in) on the cone nut, which is a plain item, WITHOUT the attached dust cap seen above.
None of this has been cleaned (yet), and the cap and locknut look a little beat up, after my failed attempt to hold the cap and lock the locknut onto the cone nut.
Despite using enough force to bend the spanners, the resultant locking of this assembly was little more than finger tight when I tested it.
Seriously. How do they tighten this?
The only thing a spanner can be fitted to is the locknut.
You can’t use any sort of locking spanner on the dust cap, it’s too soft and thin, and just bends and distorts.
You can’t grip the cone nut, its flats, which a cone nut spanner would normally locate on, are covered by that dust cap, so are completely inaccessible.
Nor can you fit nuts t the threaded axle, to stop the con nut turning or moving as you tighten the locknut. All that would happen is that the cone nut would lock onto them, and you’d have to loosen everything to get the extra nuts off the axle – which defeat the exercise.
In the factory, or perhaps with a special tool, I’m sure the cone nut and dust seal pair could be clamped and held in place while the locknut was tuned, and locked onto them, but I don’t have something like in my toolboix.
Since I was testing the new (or is that old) macro setup, I ended up with a large selection of pics, so here are a couple of alternate view, just for fun.
Decent depth of field, and detail.
Seems I can use a larger final image too, since I’m using a new method to recover sharpness, which is less aggressive than the previous option, resulting in smaller file sizes.
Footnote
Recall the disclaimer at the start of this series of post, they’re not really for readers’ benefit, but are more of ‘clear down’ for my head when I hit a problem like this.
And, it’s worked in this case.
Although I viewed hundred of pics and videos on bearing, none showed a design like the above.
BUT – while poking around related info on axles, I ended up on the Shimano website.
It seems that while my axle does not carry Shimano branding, it is based on one of their products, which has a near identical component assembly on the right end of the axle That’s their use of right/left to identify each end of the axle, and is based on the rider’s left and right, as seen when sitting on the bike. I tend to refer to the driven side, but no matter.
Secret Scotland 